I've recently decided to do some trials of cider. My method is about as simple as you can get. I bought 2L each of Aldi Apple Juice and Apple & Blackcurrent Juice. I tipped 250ml out of each to create some head space, sprinkled some Coopers kit yeast into the bottles, sealed with glad wrap and rubber band. Sat them in the door of the ferm fridge for about a month (only doing Ales simultaneously to use the same temp), then sat them in the door of the my main shed / cc fridge for about a month. Bottled them a week ago into a 750ml PET bottle and two 450ml Grolsch bottles each (two carb drops for each of the 750's, one each for the 450's) and now have them in my conditioning chamber (ie dead fridge).
I figure the worst that can happen is I dump a few litres of crap that cost bugger all, but the taste at bottling was promising. The straight apple I think will be reasonably dry, but the apple & blackcurrent had a little sweetness to it. Interesting to watch them ferment side by side as well, as the apple & blackcurrent fermented a lot more vigorously than the straight apple. It's predominately for SWMBO who is out of drinking action until April when she spits out our third rug rat, so it should be nice and aged by then.
This also inspired me to trial a mead. So, in keeping with the same KISS method, I dissolved 500g of honey into 1.5L of warm water, poured into a cleaned and sanitized 2L juice bottle, put lid on and cooled in the fridge to pitching temp, sprinkled some kit yeast in and sealed with glad wrap and a rubber band. I've put it in a laundary cupboard until it clears, which I understand may take a couple of months or so. I'm assuming / hoping that the alcohol content will be a little high for the yeasts tolerance, so it leaves some residual sugar from the honey. Once again, if it's crap, all I've lost is a couple of dollars.
